Chapter Text
John is woken up by the sounds of people talking in the open-floor kitchen outside his room and immediately curses his advanced hearing. When he cracks his eyes open, he can feel the gunk that formed in their corners while he slept. In an attempt to rub them away, he drives his fingernail into the delicate skin next to his right eye, making him wince.
He groans as he sits up, stretching and enjoying the sounds of his joints popping. As he walks into his bathroom, he trips over the carpet and almost face plants into the door, but catching onto the frame just in time.
He contemplates his plans for the day while he pisses. Olivia called yesterday, twice actually, but John can’t be assed to deal with whatever she has in store for him before he had something to eat first. Also, Valentina wants him to meet the team of people who are going to make his suits from now on. She said something about team spirit and how that must translate through matching uniforms to the public. Her eyes almost pierced right through him when she said Don’t fuck this up for me Walker. He shakes his dick before tucking it back into his shorts.
When John washes his hands, he takes a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the sink. His beard is getting long. His crows’ feet look deeper than usual and the bruise on his cheek from the fight yesterday hasn’t fully healed yet.
He scrunches his eyebrows, testing how deep the lines on his forehead can go. He also discovers a hair on his back, which he removes as fast as he can. He knows 38 isn’t old, but growing back hair feels like a leeway into shit old men do. You know, pluck their nose hairs, male pattern baldness and taking incredulous amounts to time to get even half hard. John shudders. The day his dick stops working is the day he’s killing himself, he has made that pact with himself some time ago, right after he divorced Olivia. A married man might be able to deal with the horrors of a limp dick, having someone that loves them and all that but single people? John can’t imagine what that would be like. His pride is hurt at the mere thought.
He closes the bathroom door behind himself, then the door to his bedroom too. None of anyone’s business to sneak around in there. He realizes that there is a certain irony in a simple wooden door acting as a barrier against supersoldiers, superhumans and whatever the fuck Yelena has going on.
All the private rooms are connected to the large space in the middle of the 90th floor of the watch tower. The living room and kitchen are connected, forming an awkwardly shaped center stage for every fight the New Avengers have. There are a lot. John has no idea where the budget for all the repairments that had to be done since they first moved in is coming from.
On their third night, John started a fight with Alexei because he accused him of not spending any time with his teammates. To which John replied that he absolutely did not need to and that they may be the New Avengers to the people of New York and the world, but that behind closed doors he has no reason to act all lovey dovey with any of them. They’re strangers to him, after all.
The prospect of closeness to these weirdos did not seem appealing to John in the slightest. Alexei then asked him how he could say something like that and John simply wasn’t sure what Alexei meant. John was simply stating a fact, unsure of what Alexei was so butthurt about. He then made a comment how he also had no idea why or how Alexei acted to fatherly towards Yelena if they were not even blood related. Alexei then lost his composure and threw his glass at John, which shattered on the wall behind him and stained the wallpaper.
An ugly feeling roared inside John and he, unwilling to back down, started yelling and throwing things back and Valentina got a hefty bill delivered to her emails the next morning.
-
John stands in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for himself. He sticks his head into the fridge. There is granola, yoghurt, orange juice and kiwi. As he sets up, he realizes that he is actually not alone. Ava is sitting on the couch a few feet away from him. He feels stupid for not paying attention to her even heartbeat earlier. He looks down. The blood from a wound on his finger drips onto the cutting board.
There is a small speck on the knife he just used to cut up the fruit. As he lifts his finger to suck on the wound, he almost knocks his bowl from the countertop. The cut burns as he closes his lips around it. The blood is warm, acrid.
Ava is looking at him from across the room, her eyebrows raised in question. John grunts at her in response. This is as far as their morning talks go.
Bucky is also there, silently observing the exchange with his coffee mug raised to his lips, his metal arm nowhere to be seen. He looks tired – ready for the grave if John is being honest. His eyes are bloodshot and the skin around them looks thin. John knows that supersoldiers don’t really need to sleep all that much but Barnes’ look tells him that this is the result of not only a lack of sleep but likely the pressure from Valentina’s PR people telling him that he is responsible for at least making them look like a team. Since the public is unable to see their lack of interaction in the tower, they have been able to get away with not really talking much to each other. Bucky has been telling Valentina that they’re getting to know each other. But that is an act Bucky can’t keep up forever and the fact that they all wanted to kill each other not too long ago looms over all of them like a dark cloud.
Bucky is also the only one John knew before this whole spectacle, so John feels like him and Bucky are kindred spirits somewhat. With their military background and them being supersoldiers and everything. He tries a tight smile in Bucky’s direction. Bucky sets his mug down and leaves to put it into the dishwasher.
John hears Ava scoff a laugh.
Okay, John knows Bucky isn’t too fond of him. He called Sam the other night to tell him about the New Avengers thing and John was able to hear his angry rant from down the hall all the way to his room.
Bucky, listen to me. I know we’re desperate for a New Avengers team but this is so below anything I could ever expect from you. Walker, of all people?! Walker??! He fucking killed that motherfucker! He stained the shield that - that shit is all over the internet, Bucky. No- Fuck you, seriously. We’re done for. This shit is so fucking important to me and you know that. You fucking walked all over me in doing this. Hiring that piece of shit. Fuck you Bucky. Don’t even think of calling me.
Bucky then came out of his room, exhausted. John made nothing of it. He made it to the watch tower and has a roof over his head and something to do for the time being. Not bad for one of the most hated men in America, if he does say so himself. Sam and Bucky’s bitchfights have nothing to do with him and everything to do with them as far as he’s concerned.
It is a bleak day, and the sweltering heat hasn’t made its debut for today yet, so John counts that as a plus. If he’s going to be trying on clothes all day, might as well not sweat through every single sample they prepared for him. John sits down at the strangely long dining table alone, muesli bowl in hand. The clacking from the spoon and Bucky wolfing down a protein bar are the only sounds in the room as they eat.
Bucky’s phone chimes. He rolls his eyes and ignores it.
“How did your fitting go?”, Ava quips from behind the back of the couch.
Bucky throws his arm in the air. “Fine, I guess? Not sure how I feel about the size of the logo. Can’t imagine Sam is too happy about the name either.”
Ava nods. “Did you talk to him about it?”
The phone chimes again.
Bucks runs his hand down his face, dragging the skin as he goes.
“Not yet, we- just, not yet”
Ava and Bucky look at him then, and John raises his eyebrows. Is this an insider he isn’t a part of? Some social cue he isn’t getting? Or are they just fucking with him?
The phone chimes a third time, ripping all their attention towards it. Bucky picks up. Valentina is screaming coordinates in his ear. He hangs up before she is finished.
“An experiment has broken free. Likely superhuman.”
-
It pisses John off more than it should that none of them can fly. It feels entirely unheroic to turn up to a mission in a car, Ava shouting directions at him as he violently disregards the speed limit. As soon as he slams its doors shut in front of the place Valentina gave them the coordinates for, Ava is already inside the glass doors inside the building looking around. It worries John that nothing looks out of the ordinary from outside besides the police holding off civilians. The building reminds him of the Northwell Health Lab on the 77th, with its exhausting amounts of high windows.
The inside is nicely air conditioned and the sweat on John’s forehead immediately cools. There is not a single person in sight. Ava is phasing around the multiple doors in the hallway behind the reception desk. When Bucky comes to stand next to him, Ava runs up to them both.
“Nothing. All the rooms are empty. This floor’s clean”
Bucky nods and leads them up the fire exit stairs next to the reception desk, up to the fourth floor. The double doors they push open are littered with numerous posters ranging from info on protective clothing to full on warnings about potential laser damage. John squints his eyes against the strain from the neon lights. He can feel a headache forming.
John goes first, his military training immediately kicking in. He raises his .45 and leans against the wall next to the doors and carefully pushes down the handle. He acts quickly, checking all the corners, every muscle in his body pulled taut, aiming his handgun left and right from the door. A bead of sweat is suddenly running down his temple.
Another hallway greets him, bright white and devoid of any people.
“Clear”
Ava phases through the door (a bit extra) and Bucky takes it upon himself to check the doors lining both sides of the corridor. John appreciates the precision in which Bucky takes on his task. The sweat on his back stops running. He peeks into a storage closet on the right, rifling through small containers, until his eyes land on a particular bottle. He picks it up, turns it over and puts it into one of the pockets on his utility belt and goes back outside. When they reach the end of the hallway, Bucky declares all the rooms cleared as well, and John can see the tension visibly falling from Ava’s shoulders. The last door leads to the central lab and with the rest of the building being empty, John does not want to imagine what is going on in there.
Ava phases through the doors first, with John and Bucky rolling their eyes at her carelessness. If she gets spotted, the both of them can’t quickly escape through the closest concrete wall as well as she can.
They hear a loud clang from behind the door and two seconds later Ava sticks her head through it. But before John can even take a step into Ava’s direction, she is pulled back by something he can’t see, and the door slams shut.
He takes off after her, her screams echoing through the door and reverberating in John’s ears. He rushes past the door and past some shelves that all contain samples of a maroon liquid. The door bangs against the wall behind him. So much for stealth.
The room is long and wide, John can’t make out the ends of the rows of stacked shelves. The heat inside is almost unbearable. The air is thick and stuffy, and John can feel the sweat on his body evaporating immediately as soon as it drips out of his pores. As he runs along the labyrinth of what seems to be samples, he is guided by the muffled sound of Ava’s cries, Bucky close behind him.
Much of the lab is destroyed, with many of the otherwise cleanly organized shelves being knocked over. The floor is covered in broken glass, bodies of the lab staff and splashes of the red liquid.
The scurry to a stop when they spot Ava getting dragged by a person by her feet. Her suit has melted around the area in which she is held. The heat here is worse than anywhere else. John can barely make the two of them out through the damp air. He can smell himself perspiring through his suit and the distinct odor of the burning flesh on Ava’s ankles.
The guy grabbing her is below average height and quite scrawny, but his skin looks unnaturally reddish brown and tough, like freshly polished leather. His eyes glow, and the hairs on his scalp and face seem to have melted off. John blinks through the sweat running into his eyes and throws his broken shield at him. It bounces off the guys’ head with ease, leaving a stain of molten metal in its wake. Bucky shoots, but the bullet also seems to melt as soon as it reaches the guy’s body, its remains running down his supernaturally hot skin.
It does distract him long enough to let Ava regain her senses and phase out of his grip. She screams in agony as soon as her feet land on the floor. Bucky shoots her a look and John watches her attempting to phase outside, but the guy punches her in the back before she can move away. The blow knocks out all the air from her lungs and, to John’s horror, Ava collapses face first on the floor.
John lungs forward and puts his entire body weight into his first punch. But before he hears the sickening crack of his knuckles breaking, he screams in pain from the heat getting under his suit. He stumbles backward, his right hand a mess of singed flesh and broken bones. The glass shards on the floor go flying in all directions from the intensity of his attack. But the heated man doesn’t even flinch.
John’s eyes widen when he sees the man turn around slowly and shrugging his shoulders, as if John’s entire power collected into a single punch was nothing more than an annoying fly sitting on his shoulder. Bucky goes in next, his metal arm thankfully not wired with nerves and sinews that immediately melt as soon as they get in contact with the other man. He growls, and Bucky and him deliver blows to each other’s faces at lighting speed, it’s so fast that John has trouble keeping up. His hand loses a worrying amount of blood and Ava is still lying on the floor unconscious, and Bucky’s arm is turning white from the heat. The skin around the protheses is sizzling, cooked from the metal attached to it.
John steps in, his boots are steel toed, so he starts kicking the man from angles that don’t make his footwear immediately disintegrate into thin air. His feet hurt, and combined with the feverish warmth and the sweat collecting between his toes he can feel blisters forming and bursting in record time. He isn’t sure if the liquid collected in his combat boots is simply sweat or entirely wound secretion or both.
The guy lands a hard hit on Bucky’s left side, who goes down tumbling and gripping the area where his suit burned off. John’s adrenaline spikes when the man turns around to face him. John is now his only opponent still standing. The wounds on his feet make his stance unsteady and his right hand is basically smashed to pieces, but he still raises both fists.
Bucky quietly says don’t, but John isn’t going to let this fucker win. Not on his watch.
He circles him in a predatory stance, the superhuman mimicking him, performing a special kind of dance macabre. The man hasn’t attacked first yet in this fight, so John feels he has the upper hand when it comes to offense.
There is a beep. John turns. Help is here!
Bucky looks at him, eyes blown wide in terror. He is lying on the floor on his back in a pool of his own blood. Ava hasn’t moved. Bucky’s watch is raised to his mouth. He gave their location to whoever came for support. Bucky gives the sign for Bob and Yelena.
The attack comes from behind, with no way for John to block or dodge.
The sheer heat and pain from the blow makes John scream in a way that feels like his eyes would pop out of their sockets. He turns, the man now standing in close proximity. John put his hand on his right side. He can feel soft, wet burned flesh soaking unreal amounts of blood into his glove, a stark contrast to the feel of solid bone of one of his ribs sticking out from his side. It hurts like shit to even intake a breath. John wheezes, unable to voice his pain any other way.
He looks around the room, desperate for anything to shield himself with. His eyes land on one of the lab doctors who were unfortunate enough to be around when this experiment broke free. He hauls the man up with his left arm, the movement making his cracked ribs scream in protest. There is no way to describe the feeling of bone freely moving around inside a wound. John holds his human shield in front of his body and makes a run towards one of the big windows on the south end of the lab. He unholsters his .45 and shoots at the glass four times before it shatters, creating an opening for him to stick his upper body through. He checks for the burning man. He is running after John, slowly though. A side effect from his powers?
John hears the screams from the people outside. He whips his head around so fast that his vision swirls. He drops the body onto the floor, the contents of the lab doctors skull smearing thin red blood on the linoleum. The glass from the shattered vitrines crunches under his boots. He sticks his head through the opening.
Outside, a different kind of heat wraps itself around him, and John can immediately feel fresh beads of sweat forming on his neck and upper lip. He licks it, tasting salty sweat and coppery blood. He takes a painful breath and screams out of the broken window as loud as he can.
A scorchingly hot hand lands on his shoulder, frying right through the remains of his suit and the skin beneath. John turns around and lifts his arm in order to protect his face. The man grabs his arm, creating more burn marks and shoving John to the floor. His suit catches fire. He coughs up blood.
The man then kicks him in the stomach and John slides across the floor through broken glass until his back hits one of the cabinets. He can only shallowly breathe as the man steps closer. When he comes to stand in front of Johns lying form, he raises his foot, likely to squash John’s head beneath. He must be a sorry sight. Beaten, bloody and burning. A pile of meat, really.
He closes his eyes, ready to accept his fate.
Maybe this would buy the others more time.
Glass shatters.
John opens his eyes.
In his fading vision, he sees Sentry’s form hovering in front of the building surrounded by a frame of broken glass and a halo of the scorching august sun. His cape flaps behind him and his feet make a soft thumping noise when he lands inside the lab. The air tastes like static. John can feel the telltale hum of the force field wrapping around him. Sentry cocks his head back. His eyes glow.
The mutant looks at him, mouth curling into a bloodthirsty smile that reeks of certain success. Sentry takes a look around the room. The heated man charges at him, albeit slowly.
Sentry blinks and smashes the man into the wall with a swift move of his hand.
He leaves a splatter of black blood as he slides down, groaning in defeat.
Sentry quickly yells at Yelena to check on Ava and Bucky. John overhears Yelena yelling something back from somewhere behind him. He can feel himself slipping in and out of consciousness. His advanced healing has settled in, but John is still in excruciating pain, his suit is still burning and glass shards are digging into him.
Sentry kneels down next to him, gathering John (or rather, what is left of him) in his arms. John is not sure what is happening, but Sentry walks over to the hole where the window used to be and just steps outside.
John wants to yelp, but his broken body doesn’t let him. Flying feels weird, especially at the speed they’re going. He wants to ask Sentry where he is taking him, but talking requires a lot of breaths John can’t easily take right now. The heat from the leftover flames is growing stronger as they get more oxygen outside.
They fly past the city and towards some trees in what feels like a nanosecond. John has no idea what is going on until he feels the icy cold relief of river water gently caressing his burned back. He is sat down in a shallow place and lets the gentle waves take care of some of his pain. His suit flaps around him as he sits. Breathing gets easier by the minute.
Bob says nothing and just gets into the river as well and lets himself be carried by the weak current.
“Where are we?”, John manages after a good ten minutes.
“I dunno, some small branch of the Hudson I’m assuming.”
John scoffs.
Bob drifts atop the water, his face towards the sun. The little droplets caught in his eyelashes reflect the sunlight. John fights against a feeling of helplessness blossoming in his chest.
Some flowers die before they reach their full bloom.
The birds are singing a quiet song along with the leaves rustling above their heads which create small, crescent shadows on the water’s surface. The air smells fresh and clean, and John finally gets the taste of blood out of his mouth after rinsing it in the river. The wounds on his back are aching, and his rib is still sticking out but at least he is out of that godforsaken heat.
Bob then blinks, and some of the droplets from his eyelashes run down his flushed cheeks and back into the icy cold river. He is now looking at John, a question hanging between them in the open air. Bob opens his mouth before closing it again. John wants to make a joke about how he looks like the fish swimming past and under him. Instead, he stares. He has no time to think about how stupid he must look.
When they get out of the water, Bob is clean.
John is not.